Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Majorthebys Charming and brutal

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

morrison-dylan-fan After having watched director James Whale's interesting follow-up to All Quiet on the Western Front called The Road Back, (which sadly suffered from lots of 'troubles' from the studio)I decided that my next Whale title would be one included in a Pre-Code DVD boxset that my dad had picked up a while ago.Originally planning to watch the film after viewing a number of titles for a poll being held on IMDb's Classic Film board for the best movies of 1973,I found that I had to change my plans rather quickly,when my dad revealed that he had just sold the boxset on Amazon UK!,which led to me quickly grabbing my ticket to Waterloo station.The plot:WWI:London-Arriving in London from the US,Myra Deauville decides that she is going to become a chorus girl in a popular London nightclub,in the hope that she will make all of the money that she ever needs.Despite doing very well at being a chorus girl,Deauville discovers to her horror that the level of her income is that low,that she is at serious risk of being thrown out of her residence.Talking about her money troubles with a fellow chorus girl,Myra is told that she may be able to make all of the cash that she needs,by living her chorus girl life behind,and instead becoming a prostitute.Feeling that she has no other options which will allow her to make enough money to keep a roof over her head,Deauville decides to become a prostitute.Searching round for a location where she will be able to get plenty of customers,Myra decides to walk on Waterloo street,due to it being the first road that returning solider's walk down.Waiting round for customer's,air raid siren's are suddenly heard,which leads to Deauville rushing home.Heading home,Myra notices a woman who is struggling to pick up some food items that she has dropped,which leads to Deauville rushing over to help the woman out.As Myra helps the woman to pick up the last items,a US solider called Roy Cronin rushes over to tell the women that they need to get back to their homes due to their being a raid on.Rushing back to her home with Roy,Deauville finds herself taken by Cronin,and decides that she will keep her reason for being at Waterloo Bridge hidden under a bridge.View on the film:For the final title that he would make before entering his most successful era, (which kicked off after this movie came $50,000 under budget,and Universal asked if there was any project that he would like to do,which led to an adaptation of a novel called Frankenstein being chosen)co-editor/ (along with Clarence Kolster)directing auteur James Whale shows a tremendous determination to burn the films stage origins down,thanks to Whale's closely working with cinematography Arthur Edeson and using long,impressively complex tracking shots to show the seedy life that Myra has inadvertently confined herself to.Along with showing the grim,seedy side to Deauville's location,Whale also places to of his main personal themes at the centre of the title,with Whale using long corridor shots to show that Cronini's family is surrounded by upper-class wealth which Deauville finds herself feeling ill-fitting towards.Keeping it as a subtle undertone,Whale's (who was a POW in WWI) gives hints that happy go lucky Roy Cronini is actually suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.Bringing Robert E.Sherwood's play to the big screen,writers Benn W. Levy and Tom Reed show a surprising amount of sensitivity in their layers of character building for Myra,with Reed and Levy making sure that the tough situation's which have led Deauville down this path are always at the front of the film.Painting a detailed picture of Deauville,Levy and Reed stay away from letting the movie fall into any melodrama trappings,by instead allowing for the film to gather a raw intensity,as Deauville discovers that she is mostly wrong over how people will perceive Myra over her 'working life',and Reed and Levy reveal that they are not afraid to give their characters a knock-out punch,as the movie ends on a brilliantly bleak Film Noir note.Walking down Waterloo Bridge, the very pretty Mae Clarke, (in the first of 3 films with Whale)gives a brilliant performance as Myra Deauville,with Clarke keeping Myra away from being all doom & gloom,by creating a strong feeling of optimism,and showing Deauville to always hoping that the sun is about to come out from the thick clouds.Joining Clarke and a delightful,young Bettie Davis,Douglass Montgomery (who also worked with Davis's arch rival Joan Crawford in 1930's Paid) gives an excellent performance,with Montgomery showing Cronini to be dazed and confused as he discovers what is under Waterloo Bridge.

evanston_dad Mae Clark plays a prostitute who meets up with a young, earnest soldier during World War I. He's from a well-to-do family, and she knows they could never work as a couple, even though she wants to let herself love him. He seems not to care about their differences, even when he finds out what she does for a living. It all ends tragically and abruptly, but makes for some very compelling melodrama in the meantime.The pre-Code frankness and grit do a lot to keep the maudlin sentimentality at bay in this story that could come across as a second-rate soap opera. If this had been made ten years later (which it was, in a version starring Vivien Leigh and which I have not seen), it would have been drenched in a syrupy score that would have given us non-stop cues about what emotions we were supposed to be feeling at every turn. But there's a matter-of-factness about this film that's as surprising as any of the actual content. I've found that frequently with these pre-Code films, what's shocking about them is not the racy material, but rather the tone pervading them.Clark gives a very good performance, but I was actually more impressed with Kent Douglass as the young soldier. He has a natural acting style that seems ahead of its time compared to his contemporaries. And Bette Davis has a small role as the soldier's sister, and proves why she became one of the biggest stars of all time. Every time she's on screen, and even in a few instances when you can't see her but can only hear her, she completely dominates the film.And maybe this makes me sound supremely stupid, but I didn't know London dealt with a blitz during WWI as well.Grade: A-

gavin6942 In World War I London, Myra Deauville (Mae Clarke) is an American out of work chorus girl making ends meet by picking up men on Waterloo Bridge. During a Zeppelin air raid she meets Roy, a naive young American who enlisted in the Canadian army.Everything about this movie is great, and the rambling old man is awesome. Mae Clarke is hard to define -- she comes off as flippant and confused, which I found to be frustrating. And yet, her character is incredibly confused... so perhaps I ought to give Clarke credit for successfully fleshing out the emotions of her role.James Curtis calls the film an "assured advancement in style" over the previous Whale film, "Journey's End". Further, it has the added bonus of a pre-fame Bette Davis.Mordaunt Hall called the picture "somewhat sketchy in substance, but it is acted cleverly and there is imagination in the employment of the camera and the microphone." Which version Hall saw is unclear -- the film was cut by censors to push the idea of Myra as a chorus girl and not as a prostitute. (The cuts "horrified" James Whale, not surprisingly.) Whale completed the film $50,000 under budget, and Laemmle was so impressed he gave the director the choice of any property the studio had in the planning stages. He selected "Frankenstein" and went on to become one of the leading directors at Universal.

hasosch James Whale (1889-1957), the once very famous director of most excellent horror pictures such as the original "Frankenstein" (1931), who was later forgotten, after Hollywood forced him, in 1941, to an early retirement due to, amongst other things, non-closeted homosexual liaisons, is recently getting re-detected, having started with the restored edition of Whale's "The Old Dark House" (1932). "Waterloo Bridge" (1931), is his first self-directed feature-long movie. It stands, for all those who know a bit about the difficult life of Whale, closely under the experiences of his early years. The movie has been released for the first time on a film-carrier, having never appeared before on video, due to the self-imposed moral codex of the Hollywood studios and is part of a meritorious series called "Forbidden Hollywood", exclusively never before seen, mostly excellent pictures.Given that "Waterloo Bridge" was made in 1930, compare the acting on the one side with the contemporaneous acting in European movies of the same time - you will find a distance that cannot be bigger, since the over-acting due to the lack of sound which is so characteristic for especially German silent movies, was still sensible for a long time. On the other side, compare the mannerist speaking of the American films noir of the 30ies and 40ies - with both types, "The Waterloo Bridge" has nothing in common. Whale went even so far as to smuggle a few linguistic examples for switching of social codes into the movie - listen carefully the dialogs between the two main actors, the one is a Canadian noble-man turned soldier, the other is a street-walker and former chorus girl. But much more astonishing is not the actual choice of words of different linguistic levels, but the way how extraordinarily open topics are discussed in this movie that would still today be considered improper in many parts of society on both sides of the ocean. Another most interesting sociological feature is that Whale systematically showed the different types of everyday's behavior of a European and a Canadian. The Canadian, very close to the American, is without any reason polite a priori and thus avoiding tough subjects and rather leaves the scene instead of going through to the bloody end. She, the English girl, raises her voice, throws him bucket-wise the stinking truth of her miserable youth in his face - and kind of awakes him in doing so. Compare the scene when Myra admits to her lover's mother that she lives from pick-ups. The mother reacts as if she never had expected such an act of honesty from a girl from her cultural background. What Whale did here is a psycho-gram including not only sociological, but also linguistic behavior.When I was watching this movie, and the movie had nearly reached its end, I said to myself: something is going to happen - otherwise it is not a Whale-movie. And something terrible did happen. Watch this true jewel of highest film work and ask yourself about the function of the bridge.